Nexage Beefs Up Transparency Features For Publishers And Advertisers

Mobile ad exchange Nexage has rolled out three new tools designed to inject more transparency into its Nexage Exchange for buyers and sellers, the company said today. The tools include aggregate reporting, session depth indicators and advertiser-level reporting.

US advertisers are expected to spend nearly $3.4 billion this year on digital display ads (including mobile) purchased through real-time bidding platforms, according to eMarketer. Transparency questions, e.g., where did the ad appear and how many people saw it, continue to be major obstacles in mobile advertising, however. And as more brands enter programmatic ad markets, the pressure is rising to make sure “the technology is working the way it should be working,” said Nexage CMO Victor Milligan.

“Being able to manage different brand relationships and provide brand safety is very important, particularly for the premium market,” Milligan noted. “The premium market is saying they reject this sense of a black box [in mobile advertising] and in order to capitalize on this technology, a level of transparency has to be in place.”

Two of the new features are aimed at publishers: aggregate reporting that lets publishers track the performance of each site and advertiser-level reporting that allows publishers to see which advertisers are buying their impressions. The session depth indicators were designed for buyers, enabling them to better understand the “true value” of the impression they are bidding on based on how many ads have already been shown to a consumer during previous app or game sessions and other metrics.

“There’s still a certain murkiness to programmatic [ad buying] that has to be addressed,” added Milligan. “With these new features, publishers and buyers are getting access to more analytics and reports to help them make better decisions.”